Well-known Indian socialite and philanthropist Parmeshwar Godrej breathed her last on Monday night at Mumbai’s Breach Candy hospital, where she was admitted recently. She was reportedly suffering from a degenerative ailment in the lungs.
Besides her husband Adi Godrej, Parmeshwar, a former air hostess with Air India, is survived by three children – Nisaba, Pirojsha and Tanya Dubash.
Adi Godrej often described his wife Parmeshwar as a “much more social person” than himself. After all, she was one of India’s earliest socialites who ruled the society pages for almost half a century – and wielded a great deal of power.
“Some of the friends are more close to her than me, though they are friends of both of us,” Adi told the Forbes magazine in a 2014 interview.
However, Parmeshwar had become a private person in the last few years. The news of her demise was broken by her friend and Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan on Twitter.
Back in the sixties, Parmeshwar worked as a flight attendant with Air India for a brief period and married Adi Godrej in 1965. She was close to several movers and shakers in Bollywood and had been credited for designing Hema Malini’s costumes and look in the film Dharmatma (1975) on her friend Feroz Khan’s request.
Parmeshwar was known for her fancy dos – especially a party she hosted for one of America's most famous talk show faces, Oprah Winfrey, in her Mumbai bungalow in 2012. It was attended by the who’s who of Bollywood and the corporate world (read Ambanis).
The other side to her once busy socialite life was her philanthropy.
In 2004, she started The Heroes Project with American actor and humanitarian Richard Gere to create awareness about HIV AIDS in India.
In a recent report, Parmeshwar Godrej had said that one of her happiest memories was meeting President Obama at the Nobel Peace Prize Awards banquet in Oslo and singing Jai Ho with grandsons Aryaan and Azaar along with HIV-affected children.
Rest in peace, India’s original style icon and Queen Bee.
(With inputs from ANI, Forbes and The Times of India)
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